I was going to write about how frustrating it is when things are going well and some buttheads come along and get into unwise confrontations, losing us immeasurable good will. I was going to ask how we can keep clueless people or sabateurs from doing things that media will use to demonize everyone. Basically, I was going to write about how to deal with bad actors.

But that is a trap. Those things need to be discussed. We need to keep people safe, preferably without involving police. We need to block people who are out to sabatage us. But we are never going to be able to control everyone’s actions or prevent people from doing dumb things near us or in our name. We will never be able to control the national media narrative. It isn’t in their interest. Chris Hedges is right.

It is vital that the occupation movements direct attention away from their encampments and tent cities, beset with the usual problems of hastily formed open societies where no one is turned away. Attention must be directed through street protests, civil disobedience and occupations toward the institutions that are carrying out the assaults against the 99 percent. Banks, insurance companies, courts where families are being foreclosed from their homes, city offices that put these homes up for auction, schools, libraries and firehouses that are being closed, and corporations such as General Electric that funnel taxpayer dollars into useless weapons systems and do not pay taxes, as well as propaganda outlets such as the New York Post and its evil twin, Fox News, which have unleashed a vicious propaganda war against us, all need to be targeted, shut down and occupied. Goldman Sachs is the poster child of all that is wrong with global capitalism, but there are many other companies whose degradation and destruction of human life are no less egregious.

So instead I would like to focus on some of the things we are doing right, the things we need more of.

The picture above comes from what might be the cutest protest ever. A bunch of parents took their kids out for bank transfer day. Adorable children holding handmade signs telling banks to share is total win. And bank transfer day itself was a resounding success. 650,000 people joined credit unions last month, more than all of last year. Even some rich people are dumping BOA.

How many people in this country are paying rent to slumlords for unsafe buildings without heat and water? This Harlem resident marched down to Occupy Wall Street and got a cadre of protesters to help her stand up to her landlord. That is some real shit that people can get behind.

Far too many people don’t have homes at all. Many of them are staying in the same parks with occupy protesters – like this guy who seems to have found a new mission in life. As Barbara Ehrenreich pointed out, living on the street has made homelessness a little more real for many of the participants. But some are taking it to the next level and actually trying to help protect the homeless encampments that are always under attack.

The media is unlikely to pick up on these things with as much relish as they do violence. So we are going to have to publicize the shit out of them ourselves. But when you have gorgeous visuals like those kids marching, or heartstrings-tugging personal stories about elderly people without heat, it isn’t very hard to get people interested in the story.

That doesn’t mean we don’t have to talk about how to deal with violence and sabatoge. It is especially important for us anarchists, who have to deal with much of the bullshit being done in our names (or at least blamed on us). It wouldn’t hurt for us to post videos of clean-up crews going in and fixing what was broken or shots of us blocking people from doing dumb shit. But we can’t let that become the predominant narrative.

So lets take the focus off of the encampments and the minor skirmishes between protesters and police (by which I do not mean ignore police brutality). Let’s get the focus back on the real conflict – everyday people banning together to fight powerful forces that they can’t stand up to on their own.

There is no justification for the actions that the Israeli government took this week. There is no justification for the blockade on Gaza. There is no defense for allowing settlers to invade Palestinian land, eating it up piece by piece. The apartheid in Israel/Palestine is immoral, unjust, inhumane, and repugnant. Everybody knows it. Even Israel’s defenders know it.

The typical response from defenders of Israel, when faced with Israel’s actions, is something like this one that I read on Facebook this week

And we all know what martyrdom means to Muslims – it is an honor they often seek.

Muslims, you see, are particularly irrational. (The fact that not all Palestinians are Muslim doesn’t seem to matter in the slightest.) That’s why, when butted up against a moral wall, an Israeli I spoke to defended his country by saying “Palestinian women strap their kids with bombs.” What that Israeli meant was – Yes, our actions are crazy, but it’s because we are dealing with crazy people.

Even people who recognize the immorality of Israel’s actions still vilify Palestinians by erasing their actions and ignoring their movements. Take this video from the Young Turks. (Thanks to Mariana E. for posting it.)

Once again, someone is lecturing Palestinians about nonviolence. Once again, someone is telling Palestinians that they should learn from Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Which is infuriating. Because there has always been nonviolent, Palestinian resistance.

the reality is that Palestinians have consistently chosen nonviolent resistance before arms – from the general strikes of 1936, to the consistent appeals to international legal bodies, to the weekly demonstrations against the wall. It has been the continued dispossession at the hands of Israel, and the silence of the international community despite these nonviolent efforts, that has led some Palestinians to view violence as the only option.

As Yousef Munayyer describes in the article quoted above, if there is a Palestinian Gandhi, he or she is most likely languishing in an Israeli jail. Just because the New York Times doesn’t report on the nonviolent movements or pretends as though they are new does not make it so. Like most U.S. media, they prefer not to contradict the image of Palestinians as irrational, inhuman, crazies.

So below I am linking to videos, articles, and websites that show a different picture of the Palestinian people than you get on the U.S. mainstream news. Next time someone gives you the “they’re all crazy and violent” response, feel free to provide them a link.

By now you have surely heard about Rand Paul’s interview with Rachel Maddow. Paul slimed around for twenty minutes trying not to admit that he does not support the provisions in the 1964 Civil Rights Act that made it illegal for a private business to discriminate.

On Rachel’s next show, she had a segment on why Rand Paul’s views were so important to get out in the open. You can watch it here.

Around minute 6, Rachel made the claim that the civil rights act “ended, for example, Woolworths lunch counter practice of only serving white people.”

Actually, no it didn’t. Four college students – Ezell A. Blair, Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), Franklin E. McCain, Joseph A. McNeil, and David L. Richmond - took it upon themselves to take that lunch counter. And a whole lot of other people sat at that counter day after day until Woolworths changed their policy.

You can watch a segment about the Woolworth protest here (excuse the hokey, travel channelish soundtrack).

It wasn’t government action that integrated Woolworth’s, it was direct action.

One of the most frustrating things about the liberal narrative is that it gives presidents, congress, and the supreme court credit for things that they have no business getting credit for. Elites did not lead the way. They did things kicking and screaming, if they did them at all, after massive mobilization by everyday people.

And the worst thing is not even that people like Ezell A. Blair, Jr., Franklin E. McCain, Joseph A. McNeil, and David L. Richmond don’t get credit for what they do. The worst thing is that the liberal narrative makes it appear that our only option is to vote every four years and spend the rest of the time screaming at our television screens.

It makes you feel powerless.

But we aren’t any less powerful than Ezell A. Blair, Jr., Franklin E. McCain, Joseph A. McNeil, and David L. Richmond. They didn’t wait for the government to ride in on a white horse and save the day. They didn’t sit at home watching Tweedledee Democrat and Tweetledum Republican play political ping pong. They made it happen.

Want jobs? Take over a factory. Neighborhood school an underfunded prison that isn’t teaching you shit? Start your own damn school. Pissed that banks are raking in millions while they foreclose on people’s houses? Put your body between those houses and the sheriffs trying to evict those people.

And the next time someone tries to tell you that those benevolent politicians swooped in and saved black people, remind them who the real heroes are.

Let’s set aside for just a moment the horrors of war. Ignore the cost in human lives, the suffering, the destruction. Ignore the repercussions that are felt for generations. And let’s ignore any debates about what it means to declare “victory” in a place like Iraq, where people continue to fight and die long after we supposedly won. Ignore questions about whether or not there can ever be a winner when millions die. Ignore all of that and just ask yourself this:

How do you win a war?

You win a war through strategy. You win a war by controlling supply chains and by having access to more energy (oil). You win a war by controlling transportation and mastering communications. You win a war by having more people on your side. You win a war by propaganda. You win a war by being willing to keep fighting after your opponent has quit.

In other words, you win a war by being smarter.

People who scoff at the idea of non-violence do not stop to consider whether or not the side willing to be the most violent and ruthless is the side that wins in a war. If they did stop to think about it, they would have a difficult time making the argument that England was more ruthless than Germany in WWII or that the colonists were more ruthless than the English in the American revolutionary war.

The reason military strategists study prior wars and battles is to learn tactics. The reason that our military focuses so much on psychological operations is because they know that force is often impossible. The government needed to trick us in order to get people to support invading Iraq. The military strategy in Iraq is to “win hearts and minds” because they can only stop fighting if the citizens of Iraq let them.

So if wars are won through strategy, through tactics, through smarts – and not through ruthless violence – why not focus on the strategy without the violence?

Many people believe that some injustices are so heinous that violence is not only necessary, it is obligatory. But they rarely take the next step. They rarely imagine what would happen after the violence stops, assuming it can be stopped. Who among them is going to create a better, more just world? A soldier?

A soldier is not trained to create. He is trained to destroy. Military training is about smashing a person’s ego until they are willing to obey without question. It is about instilling hierarchy. It is about learning to dehumanize the “enemy.” It is about suppressing pangs of conscience. It is about becoming a killer.

When the soldier returns from whatever horrors he has to see and participate in, he brings the horrors back with him. Returning soldiers have mental health problems. They are more likely to have drug and alcohol problems. Many are suicidal. Some are homicidal. Is that soldier, with all his problems, the person who will be able to create a better way of life?

Contrast the training of a soldier with the training of a non-violent resister.

Imagine the inner strength, patience, and command over your own emotions it takes to face down dogs without responding with violence? Imagine the vision that comes from that kind of discipline and self awareness. How could that not be better preparation for building a more just world?

When James Baldwin and Malcolm X debated each other (recordings below), Malcolm X asserted his right to defend himself. He claimed that the black man’s freedom rested on his willingness to do “the same thing that Patrick Henry did to make this country what it was for white people.” And in doing so, he called out the hypocrisy of idolizing the actions of one person and vilifying those same actions when another claims the right to them.

That hypocrisy is indisputable. So is the fact that Americans idolize violence and violent heroes. But while Baldwin did not dispute Malcolm X’s facts, he did dispute his conclusions.

“Patrick Henry is not one of my heroes…I don’t see any reason for me, at this late date, to begin modeling myself on an image which I’ve always found frankly to be mediocre and not a standard to which I myself could repair…the only thing that really arms anybody when the chips are down is how closely, how thoroughly, he can relate to himself and deal with the world…I don’t think that a warrior is necessarily a man…It is very difficult to be a man…What it involves, for me anyway, is an ability to look at the world, to look at whatever it is and to say what it is and to deal with it and to face it.

A soldier will have a very hard time looking at the world and seeing it for what it is. A soldier has to lie to himself. How could a soldier stand not to? You can’t make a better world by creating people who can’t look into their own hearts, who have to live in denial of their actions.

We all have the right to defend ourselves, but we also have the obligation to examine what we will become by exercising that right. If, in the process of becoming the victor, you have to also become a monster, what have you really won?

The situation in Mexico keeps degrading. Predictably, increased police and military are being used against more than just drug cartels. I mean they are so handy at getting rid of unions. Also, they don’t actually have to worry about trials or anything, they can just shoot people and then kick back with a cold one.

Wiretap says that Latinos are Underrepresented in Nonprofits. I can testify to that, having worked in Cali nonprofits for six years. They say there is some better news when it comes to board representation, but I’m fairly sure those figures are misleading. In Central California, the same handful of Latinos were on many, many boards. In other words, they are counting the same few Latinos over and over.

Yvette brings up a good point about why women who are anti-porn don’t have equally scathing critiques about working at McDonalds. Those women probably don’t buy porn, but they do buy cheap food from poor women (as I’ve written about before).

Janelle wrote a great article about sharing on Trust is the Only Currency. It’s amazing how many ways there are to shift our lives in a more cooperative direction.

And, finally, this article over at the New York Review of Books talks about nonviolent revolutions since 1989. It’s long, but there is a lot to debate about in the piece (especially for the revolutionarily inclined).